peter-

i agree w/ your last comment--you would necessarily want all parent nodes to 
a node nested 45 deep.  however, you should be able to specify the starting 
node, and be able to test any of its children.  i think this is what i need 
to do.

craig

"Peter Flynn" <peter.nosp@m...> wrote in message 
news:3qj1ctFff63hU2@i......
> "Craig Buchanan" <msnews.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>> assume that i have this xml stored in a domDocument:
>> <Persons>
>>     <Person>
>>         <FirstName>Craig</FirstName>
>>         <LastName>Buchanan</LastName>
>>     </Person>
>>     <Person>
>>         <FirstName>Another</FirstName>
>>         <LastName>Buchanan</LastName>
>>     </Person>
>> </Persons>
>>
>> what is the best mechansim to be able to "query" this document using
>> selectsinglenode, and always return a <Persons> element and the 0 to many
>> <Person> elements that match the xpath query?
>>
>> Case A: if I use "//Persons", i get the xml listed above.
>>
>> Case B: if i use "//Persons/Person[LastName='Buchanan']", i get:
>>     <Person>
>>         <FirstName>Craig</FirstName>
>>         <LastName>Buchanan</LastName>
>>     </Person>
>>
>> it should return the entire xml string listed above.
>>
>> Case C: if i do "//Persons/Person[FirstName='Craig']", i get:
>>
>>     <Person>
>>         <FirstName>Craig</FirstName>
>>         <LastName>Buchanan</LastName>
>>     </Person>
>>
>> i should get
>> <Persons>
>>     <Person>
>>         <FirstName>Craig</FirstName>
>>         <LastName>Buchanan</LastName>
>>     </Person>
>> </Persons>
>>
>> what am i missing?
>
> I'd assume that selectsinglenode does exactly what its name implies,
> and adds an implicit [1] after every XPath selection, and for any
> non-root match, it returns the containing element plus its parent.
>
> What does it do if <Person> is 45 element levels deep in a big
> hierarchy, with assorted ancestors which may have compulsory elements
> or mixed content? Should it just return a well-formed document with
> minimal element markup all the way back to the root element every time?
>
> ///Peter
>